'Intergeneric' translation
Seminar: 29 May 2010
Dr Saeed Talajooy, more ...
Venue:The Eighth Biennial Conference of Iranian Studies
California, USA, more ...
Abstract: Iranian Cinema and Intercultural Adaptation: The Case of Dariush Mehrjui
Modern translation theories undermine the assumption that language or sign systems can be treated as transparent vehicles of thought between cultures. In his letter to Toshiko Izutsu, Derrida informs his Japanese translator that “the question of deconstruction is also through and through the question of translation” and that language is not merely a vehicle for something that pre-exists it. (1985: 1) Yet intercultural translation has always been a major vehicle of intellectual cross-fertilization and any period of cultural renaissance is preceded by a period of intense translation activities. In other words, the adaptation and recreation of art forms and ideas in another culture and even “mistranslation” have been major causes of social development. As Gayatri Spivak explains, “translation is, after all, one version of intertextuality. If there are no unique words, if, as soon as a privileged concept-word emerges, it must be given over to the chain of substitutions and to the ‘common language’, why should that act of substitution that is translation be suspect?” (2006: 488). Yet even from a less radical perspective, the choice of a text for translation or adaptation is grounded in the adapter’s desire to write a hi/story of the present rather than just to translate a text of the past. S/he does more than just rewriting, paraphrasing or recreating a story or a play of the past.
Within this theoretical framework, film adaptation is known as intersemiotic translation and its products are categorized according to their structural, inter-historical, intercultural and inter-paradigmatic qualities. It is also hailed as one of the major ways for intensifying or expanding the cultural impacts and functions of the discourse promoted in a literary text. In Iran, Dariush Mehrjui is the most important filmmaker engaged in adapting Iranian and western novels and plays. His early masterpiece, The Cow (1970), took the symbolic realism of Iranian art cinema to a new level by transforming Gholamhosein Sa’di’s The Mourners of the Baial into a memorable film on the poverty of Iranian villages and the psychology of human identity as defined within the circle of his/her dependencies. Most of his later films were also inspired by or adapted from Iranian and foreign novels and plays. My presentation will be based on the paper that I am currently writing on Mehrjui’s intercultural adaptations. The purpose of the paper is to offer new perspective on Mehrjui’s contribution to Iranian culture in the light of contemporary translation and reception theories. I will, therefore, present a summary of my paper that compares the structural qualities and the social functions of The Postman (1971) with Georg Buchner’s Woyzeck (1836), Hamoon (1990) with Saul Bellow’s Herzog (1964), Sara (1993) with Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, (1879), Pari (1995) with J. D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey (1961), and Santoori (2007) with Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts (1881).
Further Reading & References
Akrami, Jamshid, ‘Sustaining a Wave for Thirty Years: The Cinema of Dariush Mehrjui’ (2000) at <http://www.iranianfilms.net/Mehrjui.pdf>
Bloom, Harold, Saul Bellow (Modern Critical Views), (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986).
Bloom, Harold, J. D. Salinger (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 2008).
Dabashi, Hamid, Masters and Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema (Mage Publishers: 2007).
Derrida, Jacques, ‘Letter to a Japanese Friend’, trans. David Wood and Robert Bernasconi, in David Wood and Robert Bernasconi (eds.) Derrida and Difference, (Coventry: Parousia Press, 1985): 1-5.
Even-Zohar, Itamar, ‘The Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysystem’ in The Translation Studies Reader, (New York & London: Routledge, 2004)
Holledge, Julie and Tomkins, Joanne, Women’s Intercultural Performance , ( London and New York: Routledge, 2000).
Hugerford, Amy, ‘J D Salinger, Franny and Zooey’ in The American Novel Since 1945 (Yale Online: Lecture 10 of 26) < http://academicearth.org/lectures/jd-salinger-franny-and-zooey>
‘Pari’ in Salaam Cinema at < http://www.salamcinema.com/pari.html>.
Sefriyan, Mohammad, ‘From “Mash Hassan” to “Ali Santouri;” An Illustration of Collapse’ at http://www.gozaar.org/template1.php?id=1129&language=english
Spivak Gayatri Chakravorty, ‘Translator’s Preface to Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology ’ (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins U. P., 1976): ix-lxxxvii.
Wright, Rochelle, ‘Darius Mehrju'i's Sara: A Doll House through an Iranian Lens’ at http://www.ibsensociety.liu.edu/conferencepapers/iraniandollhouse.pdf
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